F4 • FF • Fraction

Jerry writes about the madness of these live shows in New York in DEAN AND ME: A LOVE STORY and I didn't believe it... until I saw these.

COVER

This is funny -- I dashed this text out just as a kind of placeholder, just to get the idea across. It's a ref. to one of my favorite FLASH covers

  and mike dropped it in verbatim and… and wow, what do you know, sometimes your first instinct is kinda right.

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OLD JOHN STORM. The crazy uncle of the team. And catalyst for many things to follow.

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I can not think of a more horrifying way to kill off Sue Storm than this.

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DOOM THE ANNIHILATING CONQUEROR. Sometimes you just type things and that's what comes out. And you realize, oh, oh man, this could really be something. There's something about writing for Mike that skates into the automatic for me? I find myself leaving things blank in outline (well, "outline") that I'd normally lock in and letting the moment sorta just come out… like Doom, Kang, and Annihilius all high-fiving to evil. And here we go: our worst case scenario revealed.

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These kids. Look at these kids. You are gonna hate my guts when you see what I do to all of these kids.

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The Moloids as Ozymandias. On to the next one.

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THE JENNNNN and the Moloids have a huge month next month. Also? How fickle are those little gold creeps, going from the Ben to the Jen just like that? pssht.

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Darla's show -- like Katy Perry and the Flaming Lips teaming up on YO GABBA GABBA? I love it. The script said:

"MADISON SQUARE GARDEN: striking a similar Atlas-esque pose on a stage, lit by ten kajillion lights and flanked by back-up DANCERS is DARLA. She sings into an ornate WIRELESS MIC at the top of her lungs. Portrait of a pop mega-star at the top of her game."

because, really, when is my hand going to out-write what Mike Allred would draw for a pop concert like this? Just get out of doc's way and let him do his thing.

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I love the acting on Scott going from happy to uh-oh in the last two panels. Mike. Mike, Mike, Mike.

THE DEXTER AD

So, here's a thing. I'm reading these to my kids -- actually, here's two things.

The first is, I'm reading these to my kids and I have been long out of the habit of reading my stuff out loud. After I give my final notes, I never read my stuff again if I can avoid it. But doing it now, with my kids, has made more than a few lines pop out as tinny and bad -- repetitions, off-rhythmed weirdness… it's been HARROWING. I am fond of pointing out to henry, "Well that's just bad writing, son," as we go. Anyway, having been shocked by the badness of it all I have ree-mbraced reading my stuff out loud in hopes of making that stuff better. AYE-YI-YI.

Second, the DEXTER ad.  I didn't pay attention to it when i was doing my read through as, well first, it wasn't until the final read through i saw it and at that point kinda EVERYBODY is waiting for the green light and, two, I ignore that stuff out of habit as a reader.

My kids, however, were horrified.

So, uh, if you're a parent and you came to our book after hearing me expound upon wanting to write something for a mass audience, and then, like me, had to explain to two kids what that guy with all that blood was -- I'm sorry. I'll do better from here on out on trying to keep an eye on those things. Understand that's not really anything I have say in -- but I can make my point as I just have above and maybe correct things like this in the future.

IT'S A PROCESS.

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"What's a Yancy Street Gang"?

Seems that every F4 writer has a take on the Yancy Street Gang -- from the Dead End Kids by way of Three Stooges pranksters in Stan and Jack's time to post-Wall Street implosion Day Trading sociopaths in Hickman's time. For my tenure here, I thought about what Anonymous in the Marvel U would be like, only a little more maliciously goon-y and prank-y. This is the beginning of a long love-hate relationship with the YSG here.

But how do you do the masks…?

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WHUZZ

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THAT'S HOW YOU DO THE MASKS.

Now APPARENTLY… somewhere the AR box will tell you HOW YOU CAN GET YOUR OWN YANCY STREET GANG MASK.

Get that app fired up, True Believers.

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WYATT. WINGFOOT. Ladies and gentlemen.

We're about to get to the most amazing year, for my money, of the F4's growth (when this blog follows that) where we go from the Inhumans, to Galactus, to Wakanda in three fell swoops. And Wyatt Wingfoot shows up along the way and very quickly becomes beloved. I hope to remind folks why.

He's got a big month here next month.

Oh! And this -- an experiment, in learning how to write for Mike. Pure silent acting. Fixed POV stuff, let's see what happens.

And, man. Look what happens.

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Oh there's no "might" about it, Medusa.

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INTERNET jerks

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Mike Allred, folks.

Mike was so excited about how this came out that he told me about it when we launched FF #1.

By the way, Mike Allred has his own Karaoke rig -- amp, mics, mixer -- and it's amazing. If he's ever like, hey, you, let's do Karaoke, YOU SAY YES TO HIM.

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INTERNET JERKS!

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For the collection, I want to ask if we can add a bit more confetti over the 13 part of 2013 -- while this, and F4, are pivoting around monthly holidays more or less as a way to mark the time the Fantastic Four are gone, I don't want to nail this down to any particular year. Does that make sense? I think I might be the only guy in the world that worries about stuff like this on this level.

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She can feel his heart pounding under there, y'know. These two. Man.

look, too, at how mike blows the last moment up -- the panel goes full bleed, breaking the classic 6-up. It's a great choice. I come from the school of writing comics that thinks pages should end with a compelling reason to flip -- a question asked, a stake raised, a cliff hung -- and on quiet moments like this, when one character slowly moves to another, what's a way to punch that up? It's almost subliminal but as Scott and Darla open their worlds up to one another, the panel and the grid open up too…

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#enddoom

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BUM! BA! BUMMMMMM!

NEXT MONTH:

Jen and Wyatt and Bentley and the Moloids go on a DREAAAAM DAAAAAATE!

i haven't done any annuals yet